Viewership figures are in for this past weekend in golf, and it’s clear which tour is resonating with fans.
Sunday’s final round telecast of the PGA Tour’s Players Championship on NBC outdrew the final round of LIV Golf’s Singapore event on FS1 by a factor of 100.
According to Josh Carpenter of Sports Business Journal, Sunday’s broadcast of the Players Championship, a weather-impacted round that ended with eventual champion Rory McIlroy and runner-up JJ Spaun tied headed into a Monday morning playoff, averaged 3.6 million viewers on NBC, up about 3% versus Scottie Scheffler’s win last year (3.5 million viewers).
Ratings! Players Championship on Sunday on NBC: 3.6M, up from 3.5M for last year’s final round.
Prior two years: 4.1M (Scheffler) and 2.9M (weather, Smith)
Peak audience for Sunday was at 7pm: 6.2M, up from 6M last year.
Weekend average just over 3M pic.twitter.com/V8mlYCXoeG
— Josh Carpenter (@JoshACarpenter) March 18, 2025
Overseas, LIV Golf held the final round of its Singapore event, which aired late Saturday night into the early hours of Sunday morning on the East Coast. Joaquin Niemann’s win averaged a paltry 34,000 viewers on FS1. The tournament continued a horrific run of viewership for the Saudi-funded golf tour ever since starting its new media rights deal with Fox Sports this season.
Now, of course, comparing these two events is hardly apples-to-apples. The Players Championship aired in the middle of the day on Sunday on a major broadcast network. LIV Singapore aired late Saturday night on a cable network. But still, the difference in viewership is dramatic.
For every one viewer that tuned into LIV Singapore, 100 viewers watched the Players Championship. For a sport like golf, which is already considered niche, that type of gap is hard to fathom.
And it’s not as if large audiences are allergic to watching live sports late at night on a cable channel. The same night that LIV Singapore aired on FS1, Formula One’s Australian Grand Prix averaged 1.1 million viewers on ESPN. That event actually began an hour and a half later than LIV Singapore, even more of an unfavorable time slot for American audiences.
FWIW: ESPN had the F1 Australian Grand Prix (season opener) starting at 11:55pm ET Saturday, and that got 1.1 million viewers. https://t.co/dx5mjopi6j
— Austin Karp (@AustinKarp) March 18, 2025
As for the PGA Tour, this week’s Players Championship continued a strong rebound in ratings from last season. The last seven tournaments contested on Tour have seen year-over-year viewership increases during the final round. It should be noted, the beginning of last season featured an uncommonly high number of weather-impacted rounds which resulted in lower viewership. Whatever the circumstances, almost two consecutive months of increases is a positive outcome.
Any way you slice it, one of golf’s major tours is off to a successful start while the other toils in relative obscurity. Whether that accelerates some form of reunification is anyone’s guess. But one thing is clear: very few people will be watching the likes of Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, and Brooks Koepka outside of major championships this year.
